Rosa AlchemicaW. B. Yeats

Table of Contents

Rosa Alchemica...................................................................................................................................................1W. B. Yeats..............................................................................................................................................1I................................................................................................................................................................1II...............................................................................................................................................................2III..............................................................................................................................................................5IV.............................................................................................................................................................7

Rosa Alchemica

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Rosa Alchemica

W. B. Yeats

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O blessed and happy he, who knowing the mysteries of the gods, sanctifies his life, and purifies his soul,celebrating orgies in the mountains with holy purifications.�Euripides.

I

It is now more than ten years since I met, for the last time, Michael Robartes, and for the first time and thelast time his friends and fellow students; and witnessed his and their tragic end, and endured those strangeexperiences, which have changed me so that my writings have grown less popular and less intelligible, anddriven me almost to the verge of taking the habit of St. Dominic. I had just published Rosa Alchemica, a littlework on the Alchemists, somewhat in the manner of Sir Thomas Browne, and had received many letters frombelievers in the arcane sciences, upbraiding what they called my timidity, for they could not believe soevident sympathy but the sympathy of the artist, which is half pity, for everything which has moved men'shearts in any age. I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no merely chemicalphantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements and to man himself; and that theysought to fashion gold out of common metals merely as part of an universal transmutation of all things intosome divine and imperishable substance; and this enabled me to make my little book a fanciful reverie overthe transmutation of life into art, and a cry of measureless desire for a world made wholly of essences.

I was sitting dreaming of what I had written, in my house in one of the old parts of Dublin; a house myancestors had made almost famous through their part in the politics of the city and their friendships with thefamous men of their generations; and was feeling an unwonted happiness at having at last accomplished along−cherished design, and made my rooms an expression of this favourite doctrine. The portraits, of morehistorical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over thedoors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at myCrevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise thatit seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knewall a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze godsand goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty andwithout his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to mybookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefullychosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Miltonin the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without theirbitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experiencedevery pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of

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polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight asthough they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed thedoorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a momentI thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness exceptthe bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with apassionate sorrow. All those forms: that Madonna with her brooding purity, those rapturous faces singing inthe morning light, those bronze divinities with their passionless dignity, those wild shapes rushing fromdespair to despair, belonged to a divine world wherein I had no part; and every experience, howeverprofound, every perception, however exquisite, would bring me the bitter dream of a limitless energy I couldnever know, and even in my most perfect moment I would be two selves, the one watching with heavy eyesthe other's moment of content. I had heaped about me the gold born in the crucibles of others; but thesupreme dream of the alchemist, the transmutation of the weary heart into a weariless spirit, was as far fromme as, I doubted not, it had been from him also. I turned to my last purchase, a set of alchemical apparatuswhich, the dealer in the Rue le Peletier had assured me, once belonged to Raymond Lully, and as I joined thealembic to the athanor and laid the lavacrum maris at their side, I understood the alchemical doctrine, that allbeings, divided from the great deep where spirits wander, one and yet a multitude, are weary; andsympathized, in the pride of my connoisseurship, with the consuming thirst for destruction which made thealchemist veil under his symbols of lions and dragons, of eagles and ravens, of dew and of nitre, a search foran essence which would dissolve all mortal things. I repeated to myself the ninth key of Basilius Valentinus,in which he compares the fire of the last day to the fire of the alchemist, and the world to the alchemist'sfurnace, and would have us know that all must be dissolved before the divine substance, material gold orimmaterial ecstasy, awake. I had dissolved indeed the mortal world and lived amid immortal essences, buthad obtained no miraculous ecstasy. As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked outinto the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky werethe furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness intoecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and Icried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritualbeauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

II

My reverie was broken by a loud knocking at the door, and I wondered the more at this because I had novisitors, and had bid my servants do all things silently, lest they broke the dream of my inner life. Feeling alittle curious, I resolved to go to the door myself, and, taking one of the silver candlesticks from themantlepiece, began to descend the stairs. The servants appeared to be out, for though the sound pouredthrough every corner and crevice of the house there was no stir in the lower rooms. I remembered thatbecause my needs were so few, my part in life so little, they had begun to come and go as they would, oftenleaving me alone for hours. The emptiness and silence of a world from which I had driven everything butdreams suddenly overwhelmed me, and I shuddered as I drew the bolt. I found before me Michael Robartes,whom I had not seen for years, and whose wild red hair, fierce eyes, sensitive, tremulous lips and roughclothes, made him look now, just as they used to do fifteen years before, something between a debauchee, asaint, and a peasant. He had recently come to Ireland, he said, and wished to see me on a matter ofimportance: indeed, the only matter of importance for him and for me. His voice brought up before me ourstudent years in Paris, and remembering the magnetic power ne had once possessed over me, a little fearmingled with much annoyance at this irrelevant intrusion, as I led the way up the wide staircase, where Swifthad passed joking and railing, and Curran telling stories and quoting Greek, in simpler days, before men'sminds, subtilized and complicated by the romantic movement in art and literature, began to tremble on theverge of some unimagined revelation. I felt that my hand shook, and saw that the light of the candle waveredand quivered more than it need have upon the Maenads on the old French panels, making them look like thefirst beings slowly shaping in the formless and void darkness. When the door had closed, and the peacockcurtain, glimmering like many− coloured flame, fell between us and the world, I felt, in a way I could not

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understand, that some singular and unexpected thing was about to happen. I went over to the mantlepiece,and finding that a little chainless bronze censer, set, upon the outside, with pieces of painted china by OrazioFontana, which I had filled with antique amulets, had fallen upon its side and poured out its contents, I beganto gather the amulets into the bowl, partly to collect my thoughts and partly with that habitual reverencewhich seemed to me the due of things so long connected with secret hopes and fears. 'I see,' said MichaelRobartes, 'that you are still fond of incense, and I can show you an incense more precious than any you haveever seen,' and as he spoke he took the censer out of my hand and put the amulets in a little heap between theathanor and the alembic. I sat down, and he sat down at the side of the fire, and sat there for awhile lookinginto the fire, and holding the censer in his hand. 'I have come to ask you something,' he said, 'and the incensewill fill the room, and our thoughts, with its sweet odour while we are talking. I got it from an old man inSyria, who said it was made from flowers, of one kind with the flowers that laid their heavy purple petalsupon the hands and upon the hair and upon the feet of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and folded Him intheir heavy breath, until he cried against the cross and his destiny.' He shook some dust into the censer out ofa small silk bag, and set the censer upon the floor and lit the dust which sent up a blue stream of smoke, thatspread out over the ceiling, and flowed downwards again until it was like Milton's banyan tree. It filled me, asincense often does, with a faint sleepiness, so that I started when he said, 'I have come to ask you thatquestion which I asked you in Paris, and which you left Paris rather than answer.'

He had turned his eyes towards me, and I saw them glitter in the firelight, and through the incense, as Ireplied: 'You mean, will I become an initiate of your Order of the Alchemical Rose? I would not consent inParis, when I was full of unsatisfied desire, and now that I have at last fashioned my life according to mydesire, am I likely to consent?'

'You have changed greatly since then,' he answered. 'I have read your books, and now I see you among allthese images, and I understand you better than you do yourself, for I have been with many and manydreamers at the same cross−ways. You have shut away the world and gathered the gods about you, and if youdo not throw yourself at their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering purpose, for a manmust forget he is miserable in the bustle and noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek amystical union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he murmured something I couldnot hear, and as though to someone I could not see.

For a moment the room appeared to darken, as it used to do when he was about to perform some singularexperiment, and in the darkness the peacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense colour. Icast off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused by memory, and by the twilight of incense, for Iwould not acknowledge that he could overcome my now mature intellect; and I said: 'Even if I grant that Ineed a spiritual belief and some form of worship, why should I go to Eleusis and not to Calvary?' He leanedforward and began speaking with a slightly rhythmical intonation, and as he spoke I had to struggle againwith the shadow, as of some older night than the night of the sun, which began to dim the light of the candlesand to blot out the little gleams upon the corner of picture− frames and on the bronze divinities, and to turnthe blue of the incense to a heavy purple; while it left the peacocks to glimmer and glow as though eachseparate colour were a living spirit. I had fallen into a profound dream−like reverie in which I heard himspeaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with only one god,' he was saying, 'and themore a man lives in imagination and in a refined understanding, the more gods does he meet with and talkwith, and the more does he come under the power of Roland, who sounded in the Valley of Roncesvalles thelast trumpet of the body's will and pleasure; and of Hamlet, who saw them perishing away, and sighed; and ofFaust, who looked for them up and down the world and could not find them; and under the power of all thosecountless divinities who have taken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern poets andromance writers, and under the power of the old divinities, who since the Renaissance have won everythingof their ancient worship except the sacrifice of birds and fishes, the fragrance of garlands and the smoke ofincense. The many think humanity made these divinities, and that it can unmake them again; but we whohave seen them pass in rattling harness, and in soft robes, and heard them speak with articulate voices while

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we lay in deathlike trance, know that they are always making and unmaking humanity, which is indeed butthe trembling of their lips.'

He had stood up and begun to walk to and fro, and had become in my waking dream a shuttle weaving animmense purple web whose folds had begun to fill the room. The room seemed to have become inexplicablysilent, as though all but the web and the weaving were at an end in the world. 'They have come to us; theyhave come to us,' the voice began again; 'all that have ever been in your reverie, all that you have met with inbooks. There is Lear, his head still wet with the thunder−storm, and he laughs because you thought yourselfan existence who are but a shadow, and him a shadow who is an eternal god; and there is Beatrice, with herlips half parted in a smile, as though all the stars were about to pass away in a sigh of love; and there is themother of the God of humility who cast so great a spell over men that they have tried to unpeople their heartsthat he might reign alone, but she holds in her hand the rose whose every petal is a god; and there, O swiftlyshe comes! is Aphrodite under a twilight falling from the wings of numberless sparrows, and about her feetare the grey and white doves.' In the midst of my dream I saw him hold out his left arm and pass his righthand over it as though he stroked the wings of doves. I made a violent effort which seemed almost to tear mein two, and said with forced determination: 'You would sweep me away into an indefinite world which fillsme with terror; and yet a man is a great man just in so far as he can make his mind reflect everything withindifferent precision like a mirror.' I seemed to be perfectly master of myself, and went on, but more rapidly:'I command you to leave me at once, for your ideas and phantasies are but the illusions that creep likemaggots into civilizations when they begin to decline, and into minds when they begin to decay.' I had grownsuddenly angry, and seizing the alembic from the table, was about to rise and strike him with it, when thepeacocks on the door behind him appeared to grow immense; and then the alembic fell from my fingers and Iwas drowned in a tide of green and blue and bronze feathers, and as I struggled hopelessly I heard a distantvoice saying: 'Our master Avicenna has written that all life proceeds out of corruption.' The glittering feathershad now covered me completely, and I knew that I had struggled for hundreds of years, and was conquered atlast. I was sinking into the depth when the green and blue and bronze that seemed to fill the world became asea of flame and swept me away, and as I was swirled along I heard a voice over my head cry, 'The mirror isbroken in two pieces,' and another voice answer, 'The mirror is broken in four pieces,' and a more distantvoice cry with an exultant cry, 'The mirror is broken into numberless pieces'; and then a multitude of palehands were reaching towards me, and strange gentle faces bending above me, and half wailing and halfcaressing voices uttering words that were forgotten the moment they were spoken. I was being lifted out ofthe tide of flame, and felt my memories, my hopes, my thoughts, my will, everything I held to be myself,melting away; then I seemed to rise through numberless companies of beings who were, I understood, insome way more certain than thought, each wrapped in his eternal moment, in the perfect lifting of an arm, ina little circlet of rhythmical words, in dreaming with dim eyes and half−closed eyelids. And then I passedbeyond these forms, which were so beautiful they had almost ceased to be, and, having endured strangemoods, melancholy, as it seemed, with the weight of many worlds, I passed into that Death which is Beautyherself, and into that Loneliness which all the multitudes desire without ceasing. All things that had everlived seemed to come and dwell in my heart, and I in theirs; and I had never again known mortality or tears,had I not suddenly fallen from the certainty of vision into the uncertainty of dream, and become a drop ofmolten gold falling with immense rapidity, through a night elaborate with stars, and all about me amelancholy exultant wailing. I fell and fell and fell, and then the wailing was but the wailing of the wind inthe chimney, and I awoke to find myself leaning upon the table and supporting my head with my hands. I sawthe alembic swaying from side to side in the distant corner it had rolled to, and Michael Robartes watchingme and waiting. 'I will go wherever you will,' I said, 'and do whatever you bid me, for I have been witheternal things.' 'I knew,' he replied, 'you must need answer as you have answered, when I heard the stormbegin. You must come to a great distance, for we were commanded to build our temple between the puremultitude by the waves and the impure multitude of men.'

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III

I did not speak as we drove through the deserted streets, for my mind was curiously empty of familiarthoughts and experiences; it seemed to have been plucked out of the definite world and cast naked upon ashoreless sea. There were moments when the vision appeared on the point of returning, and I wouldhalf−remember, with an ecstasy of joy or sorrow, crimes and heroisms, fortunes and misfortunes; or begin tocontemplate, with a sudden leaping of the heart, hopes and terrors, desires and ambitions, alien to my orderlyand careful life; and then I would awake shuddering at the thought that some great imponderable being hadswept through my mind. It was indeed days before this feeling passed perfectly away, and even now, when Ihave sought refuge in the only definite faith, I feel a great tolerance for those people with incoherentpersonalities, who gather in the chapels and meeting−places of certain obscure sects, because I also have feltfixed habits and principles dissolving before a power, which was hysterica passio or sheer madness, if youwill, but was so powerful in its melancholy exultation that I tremble lest it wake again and drive me from mynew−found peace.

When we came in the grey light to the great half−empty terminus, it seemed to me I was so changed that Iwas no more, as man is, a moment shuddering at eternity, but eternity weeping and laughing over a moment;and when we had started and Michael Robartes had fallen asleep, as he soon did, his sleeping face, in whichthere was no sign of all that had so shaken me and that now kept me wakeful, was to my excited mind morelike a mask than a face. The fancy possessed me that the man behind it had dissolved away like salt in water,and that it laughed and sighed, appealed and denounced at the bidding of beings greater or less than man.'This is not Michael Robartes at all: Michael Robartes is dead; dead for ten, for twenty years perhaps,' I keptrepeating to myself. I fell at last into a feverish sleep, waking up from time to time when we rushed past somelittle town, its slated roofs shining with wet, or still lake gleaming in the cold morning light. I had been toopre−occupied to ask where we were going, or to notice what tickets Michael Robartes had taken, but I knewnow from the direction of the sun that we were going westward; and presently I knew also, by the way inwhich the trees had grown into the semblance of tattered beggars flying with bent heads towards the east, thatwe were approaching the western coast. Then immediately I saw the sea between the low hills upon the left,its dull grey broken into white patches and lines.

When we left the train we had still, I found, some way to go, and set out, buttoning our coats about us, for thewind was bitter and violent. Michael Robartes was silent, seeming anxious to leave me to my thoughts; andas we walked between the sea and the rocky side of a great promontory, I realized with a new perfection whata shock had been given to all my habits of thought and of feelings, if indeed some mysterious change had nottaken place in the substance of my mind, for the grey waves, plumed with scudding foam, had grown part of ateeming, fantastic inner life; and when Michael Robartes pointed to a square ancient−looking house, with amuch smaller and newer building under its lee, set out on the very end of a dilapidated and almost desertedpier, and said it was the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, I was possessed with the phantasy that the sea,which kept covering it with showers of white foam, was claiming it as part of some indefinite and passionatelife, which had begun to war upon our orderly and careful days, and was about to plunge the world into anight as obscure as that which followed the downfall of the classical world. One part of my mind mocked thisphantastic terror, but the other, the part that still lay half plunged in vision, listened to the clash of unknownarmies, and shuddered at unimaginable fanaticisms, that hung in those grey leaping waves.

We had gone but a few paces along the pier when we came upon an old man, who was evidently a watchman,for he sat in an overset barrel, close to a place where masons had been lately working upon a break in thepier, and had in front of him a fire such as one sees slung under tinkers' carts. I saw that he was also a voteen,as the peasants say, for there was a rosary hanging from a nail on the rim of the barrel, and I saw I shuddered,and I did not know why I shuddered. We had passed him a few yards when I heard him cry in Gaelic,'Idolaters, idolaters, go down to Hell with your witches and your devils; go down to Hell that the herringsmay come again into the bay'; and for some moments I could hear him half screaming and half muttering

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behind us. 'Are you not afraid,' I said, 'that these wild fishing people may do some desperate thing againstyou?'

'I and mine,' he answered, 'are long past human hurt or help, being incorporate with immortal spirits, andwhen we die it shall be the consummation of the supreme work. A time will come for these people also, andthey will sacrifice a mullet to Artemis, or some other fish to some new divinity, unless indeed their owndivinities, the Dagda, with his overflowing cauldron, Lug, with his spear dipped in poppy− juice lest it rushforth hot for battle. Aengus, with the three birds on his shoulder, Bodb and his red swineherd, and all theheroic children of Dana, set up once more their temples of grey stone. Their reign has never ceased, but onlywaned in power a little, for the Sidhe still pass in every wind, and dance and play at hurley, and fight theirsudden battles in every hollow and on every hill; but they cannot build their temples again till there have beenmartyrdoms and victories, and perhaps even that long−foretold battle in the Valley of the Black Pig.'

Keeping close to the wall that went about the pier on the seaward side, to escape the driving foam and thewind, which threatened every moment to lift us off our feet, we made our way in silence to the door of thesquare building. Michael Robartes opened it with a key, on which I saw the rust of many salt winds, and ledme along a bare passage and up an uncarpeted stair to a little room surrounded with bookshelves. A mealwould be brought, but only of fruit, for I must submit to a tempered fast before the ceremony, he explained,and with it a book on the doctrine and method of the Order, over which I was to spend what remained of thewinter daylight. He then left me, promising to return an hour before the ceremony. I began searching amongthe bookshelves, and found one of the most exhaustive alchemical libraries I have ever seen. There were theworks of Morienus, who hid his immortal body under a shirt of hair−cloth; of Avicenna, who was a drunkardand yet controlled numberless legions of spirits; of Alfarabi, who put so many spirits into his lute that hecould make men laugh, or weep, or fall in deadly trance as he would; of Lully, who transformed himself intothe likeness of a red cock; of Flamel, who with his wife Parnella achieved the elixir many hundreds of yearsago, and is fabled to live still in Arabia among the Dervishes; and of many of less fame. There were very fewmystics but alchemical mystics, and because, I had little doubt, of the devotion to one god of the greaternumber and of the limited sense of beauty, which Robartes would hold an inevitable consequence; but I didnotice a complete set of facsimiles of the prophetical writings of William Blake, and probably because of themultitudes that thronged his illumination and were 'like the gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks upthe dew.' I noted also many poets and prose writers of every age, but only those who were a little weary oflife, as indeed the greatest have been everywhere, and who cast their imagination to us, as a something theyneeded no longer now that they were going up in their fiery chariots.

Presently I heard a tap at the door, and a woman came in and laid a little fruit upon the table. I judged that shehad once been handsome, but her cheeks were hollowed by what I would have held, had I seen her anywhereelse, an excitement of the flesh and a thirst for pleasure, instead of which it doubtless was an excitement ofthe imagination and a thirst for beauty. I asked her some question concerning the ceremony, but getting noanswer except a shake of the head, saw that I must await initiation in silence. When I had eaten, she cameagain, and having laid a curiously wrought bronze box on the table, lighted the candles, and took away theplates and the remnants. So soon as I was alone, I turned to the box, and found that the peacocks of Heraspread out their tails over the sides and lid, against a background, on which were wrought great stars, asthough to affirm that the heavens were a part of their glory. In the box was a book bound in vellum, andhaving upon the vellum and in very delicate colours, and in gold, the alchemical rose with many spearsthrusting against it, but in vain, as was shown by the shattered points of those nearest to the petals. The bookwas written upon vellum, and in beautiful clear letters, interspersed with symbolical pictures andilluminations, after the manner of the Splendor Soils.

The first chapter described how six students, of Celtic descent, gave themselves separately to the study ofalchemy, and solved, one the mystery of the Pelican, another the mystery of the green Dragon, another themystery of the Eagle, another that of Salt and Mercury. What seemed a succession of accidents, but was, the

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book declared, the contrivance of preternatural powers, brought them together in the garden of an inn in theSouth of France, and while they talked together the thought came to them that alchemy was the gradualdistillation of the contents of the soul, until they were ready to put off the mortal and put on the immortal. Anowl passed, rustling among the vine−leaves overhead, and then an old woman came, leaning upon a stick,and, sitting close to them, took up the thought where they had dropped it. Having expounded the wholeprinciple of spiritual alchemy, and bid them found the Order of the Alchemical Rose, she passed from amongthem, and when they would have followed she was nowhere to be seen. They formed themselves into anOrder, holding their goods and making their researches in common, and, as they became perfect in thealchemical doctrine, apparitions came and went among them, and taught them more and more marvellousmysteries. The book then went on to expound so much of these as the neophyte was permitted to know,dealing at the outset and at considerable length with the independent reality of our thoughts, which was, itdeclared, the doctrine from which all true doctrines rose. If you imagine, it said, the semblance of a livingbeing, it is at once possessed by a wandering soul, and goes hither and thither working good or evil, until themoment of its death has come; and gave many examples, received, it said, from many gods. Eros had taughtthem how to fashion forms in which a divine soul could dwell, and whisper what they would into sleepingminds; and Ate forms from which demonic beings could pour madness, or unquiet dreams, into sleepingblood; and Hermes, that if you powerfully imagined a hound at your bedside it would keep watch there untilyou woke, and drive away all but the mightiest demons, but that if your imagination was weakly, the houndwould be weakly also, and the demons prevail, and the hound soon die; and Aphrodite, that if you made, by astrong imagining, a dove crowned with silver and had it flutter over your head, its soft cooing would makesweet dreams of immortal love gather and brood over mortal sleep; and all divinities alike had revealed withmany warnings and lamentations that all minds are continually giving birth to such beings, and sending themforth to work health or disease, joy or madness. If you would give forms to the evil powers, it went on, youwere to make them ugly, thrusting out a lip, with the thirsts of life, or breaking the proportions of a body withthe burdens of life; but the divine powers would only appear in beautiful shapes, which are but, as it were,shapes trembling out of existence, folding up into a timeless ecstasy, drifting with half−shut eyes, into asleepy stillness. The bodiless souls who descended into these forms were what men called the moods; andworked all great changes in the world; for just as the magician or the artist could call them when he would, sothey could call out of the mind of the magician or the artist, or if they were demons, out of the mind of themad or the ignoble, what shape they would, and through its voice and its gestures pour themselves out uponthe world. In this way all great events were accomplished; a mood, a divinity, or a demon, first descendinglike a faint sigh into men's minds and then changing their thoughts and their actions until hair that was yellowhad grown black, or hair that was black had grown yellow, and empires moved their border, as though theywere but drifts of leaves. The rest of the book contained symbols of form, and sound, and colour, and theirattribution to divinities and demons, so that the initiate might fashion a shape for any divinity or any demon,and be as powerful as Avicenna among those who live under the roots of tears and of laughter.

IV

A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me that I would have to learn the steps ofan exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in amagical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and accidental could bebroken, and the spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough, resembled certain antiqueGreek dances, and having been a good dancer in my youth and the master of many curious Gaelic steps, Isoon had them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a costume which suggested by its shape bothGreece and Egypt, but by its crimson colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having put into my handsa little chainless censer of bronze, wrought into the likeness of a rose, by some modern craftsman, he told meto open a small door opposite to the door by which I had entered. I put my hand to the handle, but themoment I did so the fumes of the incense, helped perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fall again intoa dream, in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the counter of a little Eastern shop. Many persons, witheyes so bright and still that I knew them for more than human, came in and tried me on their faces, but at last

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flung me into a corner with a little laughter; but all this passed in a moment, for when I awoke my hand wasstill upon the handle. I opened the door, and found myself in a marvellous passage, along whose sides weremany divinities wrought in a mosaic, not less beautiful than the mosaic in the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of aless severe beauty; the predominant colour of each divinity, which was surely a symbolic colour, beingrepeated in the lamps that hung from the ceiling, a curiously−scented lamp before every divinity. I passed on,marvelling exceedingly how these enthusiasts could have created all this beauty in so remote a place, and halfpersuaded to believe in a material alchemy, by the sight of so much hidden wealth; the censer filling the air,as I passed, with smoke of ever−changing colour.

I stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought great waves in whose shadow were faintsuggestions of terrible faces. Those beyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: 'Is the workof the Incorruptible Fire at an end?' and immediately Michael Robartes answered: 'The perfect gold has comefrom the atbanor .' The door swung open, and we were in a great circular room, and among men and womenwho were dancing slowly in crimson robes. Upon the ceiling was an immense rose wrought in mosaic; andabout the walls, also in mosaic, was a battle of gods and angels, the gods glimmering like rubies andsapphires, and the angels of the one greyness, because, as Michael Robartes whispered, they had renouncedtheir divinity, and turned from the unfolding of their separate hearts, out of love for a God of humility andsorrow. Pillars supported the roof and made a kind of circular cloister, each pillar being a column of confusedshapes, divinities, it seemed, of the wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of more than human vehemence,and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among these shapes were thrust out hands, and in these handswere censers. I was bid place my censer also in a hand and take my place and dance, and as I turned from thepillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was of a green stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale crosswas wrought in the midst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that they desired 'To trouble Hisunity with their multitudinous feet.' The dance wound in and out, tracing upon the floor the shapes of petalsthat copied the petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound of hidden instruments which were perhaps of anantique pattern, for I have never heard the like; and every moment the dance was more passionate, until allthe winds of the world seemed to have awakened under our feet. After a little I had grown weary, and stoodunder a pillar watching the coming and going of those flame−like figures; until gradually I sank into ahalf−dream, from which I was awakened by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no longer the lookof mosaic, falling slowly through the incense−heavy air, and, as they fell, shaping into the likeness of livingbeings of an extraordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud−like, they began to dance, and as they danced took amore and more definite shape, so that I was able to distinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august Egyptianfaces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; andsoon every mortal foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and in the troubled eyes that looked intountroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness of uttermost desire as though they had found at length, afterunreckonable wandering, the lost love of their youth. Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitaryfigure with a Rosa veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a dream within adream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought,that it was Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman from the beginning of theworld has ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit,and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love noblyhe knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehementjealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought thesethings, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none that can be spared out ofthe dance; into the dance! into the dance! that the gods may make them bodies out of the substance of ourhearts'; and before I could answer, a mysterious wave of passion, that seemed like the soul of the dancemoving within our souls, took Alchemica. hold of me, and I was swept, neither consenting nor refusing, intothe midst. I was dancing with an immortal august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamygesture seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkness that is between star and star, and witha love like the love that breathed upon the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted over usand round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and ages seemed to pass, and tempests to awake

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and perish in the folds of our robes and in her heavy hair.

Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that her lilies had not dropped a black petal,or shaken from their places, and understood with a great horror that I danced with one who was more or lessthan human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darknesspassed over me.

I awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw that I was lying on a roughly paintedfloor, and that on the ceiling, which was at no great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on thewalls half−finished paintings. The pillars and the censers had gone; and near me a score of sleepers laywrapped in disordered robes, their upturned faces looking to my imagination like hollow masks; and a chilldawn was shining down upon them from a long window I had not noticed before; and outside the sea roared.I saw Michael Robartes lying at a little distance and beside him an overset bowl of wrought bronze whichlooked as though it had once held incense. As I sat thus, I heard a sudden tumult of angry men and women'svoices mix with the roaring of the sea; and leaping to my feet, I went quickly to Michael Robartes, and triedto shake him out of his sleep. I then seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift him, but he fell backwards,and sighed faintly; and the voices became louder and angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon thedoor, which opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending wood, and I knew it had begun togive, and I ran to the door of the room. I pushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boardsclattered under my feet, and found in the passage another door which led into an empty kitchen; and as Ipassed through the door I heard two crashes in quick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet andthe shouts that the door which opened on to the pier had fallen inwards. I ran from the kitchen and out into asmall yard, and from this down some steps which descended the seaward and sloping side of the pier, andfrom the steps clambered along the water's edge, with the angry voices ringing in my ears. This part of thepier had been but lately refaced with blocks of granite, so that it was almost clear of seaweed; but when Icame to the old part, I found it so slippery with green weed that I had to climb up on to the roadway. I lookedtowards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, where the fishermen and the women were still shouting, butsomewhat more faintly, and saw that there was no one about the door or upon the pier; but as I looked, a littlecrowd hurried out of the door and began gathering large stones from where they were heaped up in readinessfor the next time a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks of granite. While I stoodwatching the crowd, an old man, who was, I think, the voteen, pointed to me, and screamed out something,and the crowd whitened, for all the faces had turned towards me. I ran, and it was well for me that pullers ofthe oar are poorer men with their feet than with their arms and their bodies; and yet while I ran I scarcelyheard the following feet or the angry voices, for many voices of exultation and lamentation, which wereforgotten as a dream is forgotten the moment they were heard, seemed to be ringing in the air over my head.

There are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of exultation and lamentation, and when theindefinite world, which has but half lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about to claim aperfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and when I hear, or seem to hear them, I press it to myheart and say: 'He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with subtlety and flatteringour hearts with beauty, and we have no trust but in Thee'; and then the war that rages within me at other timesis still, and I am at peace.

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